Bitcoin is Venice: Difference between revisions

Farrington believes that bitcoin is an asset, not a ''just'' a currency , and as it is not tethered to the existence of a bank or a central bank, and has independent existence, can exist without them and need not degenerate due to central bank monetary policies or investment bank grift. Bitcoin is pure abstract, tokenised capital. It is to capital what a [[non-fungible token]] is to art. But not any particular item of capital: just “capital” in the abstract, as a shared community resource, before it is transmogrified into a particular form. This is sort of like a platonic essence, or a midichlorian life force. You know, like the ''force''.

This is certainly quite a different thing to a currency. As Farrington describes it, currency implies indebtedness, to the extent you need it it therefore implies banks as a necessary agency for creating indebtedness. It centralises everything, makes everyone dependent on the [[power structure]] that is [[fractional reserve banking]]. It compels ''trust'', whether you like it or not. The bitcoin ethos is, of course, not to ''trust'' trust — not ''compulsory'' trust, anyway — and to decentralise and disintermediate where possible to remove any need for voluntary trust. A permissionless decentralised ledger functions well without trust.